


Three Pools in a Silent Wood

by ViaLethe



Series: 3 Sentence Ficathon 2021 [13]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, 3 Sentence Fiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Doomed Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Golden Age (Narnia), Sibling Love, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29895279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: A collection of 3 sentence Narnia ficlets.1)Narnia as it might have been; various AUs.2)Stories of Narnia, and Narnians.3)Tales of Eustace, Dragon and Boy Scientist.4)Caspian & Lucy as doomed lovers.5)Lucy & Peter, the golden sovereigns.6)The Queen Susan, in Narnia and without.Full contents in the notes of each chapter.
Relationships: Aslan & Eustace Scrubb, Aslan & Lucy Pevensie, Aslan & Susan Pevensie, Caspian/Lucy Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie & Eustace Scrubb, Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie & Tumnus, Reepicheep & Eustace Scrubb, Shasta | Cor/Aravis Tarkheena
Series: 3 Sentence Ficathon 2021 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2191875
Kudos: 10





	1. Three for Possibility

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2021 3 Sentence Ficathon on DW. Original prompts are included. Much love to all those who provided these prompts; you know who you are.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) Narnia, in eternal summer.  
> 2) When Edmund is the oldest and Susan the youngest, some things change, and some remain the same.  
> 3) Narnia as populated by video game fantasy creatures.  
> 4) In which Aslan is not a benevolent God.  
> 5) It's belief that creates a god, and Narnia believes in the Pevensies.

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, story takes place during different season/climate/weather_ **

_Cruel Summer_

The first thing Lucy notices upon exiting the back of the wardrobe is the thickness of the air, and how it feels rather like being slapped in the face with a steaming hot washrag.

When Mr Tumnus appears, he’s mopping his brow with a red silk handkerchief, which he hastily tucks out of sight into a clever pocket in his parasol, held up to ward off the merciless, glaring sun; behind him is a cheerful little handcart, stuffed with straw and sawdust, carefully packed around precious blocks of ice (the cart nearly upsets when he sees Lucy, but luckily stays upright, for she’s quite certain the two of them could not have maneuvered the heavy blocks back into place alone).

In the respite of the relative coolness of his cave (how her skin loves the shade, Lucy thinks, drinking in the shadow like water), he serves her dried jerky and weak lemonade with a grimace and an apology - “There’s not much to go around, I’m afraid,” he says, “for you see, it’s always summer and never harvest these days, since the Red Witch came to Narnia.”

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, the pevensies, age swap_ **

_Can’t Look at You Straight On_

“Face it, Su - no one believes you and your silly fantasies,” Edmund says, smirking even as his youngest sister’s face dissolves in tears.

Peter charges at him, of course, but it’s pathetically easy to hold his little brother off with one hand, and Peter doesn’t even bother to struggle for long enough to make it fun, just throwing Ed’s hand off and shouting, “You’re beastly, you know that?” before following Susan from the room, presumably to dry her babyish tears.

Lucy just shakes her head quietly, and somehow, that’s the only thing that really stings, that this sister, who he’s always been closest to and loved best so clearly disapproves; it’s even worse when all she says is, “You know she worships you, Ed; how could you?” before she leaves him behind too.

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, what if Narnians were entirely different beings/creatures_ **

_Can’t Go Home This Way_

She would have screamed, Lucy thinks, were it not for his jolly red scarf and jaunty little hat, so fearsome is Mr Tumnus’s appearance otherwise, with his massive stature, the green skin of his bare chest and arms, and gleaming fangs - but the hat helps, as does his apparent fear of _her_ , starting and dropping all his carefully wrapped parcels in the snow (she wants to help gather them, truly, but as they are orc-sized and she is just a little girl, even the smallest is quite beyond her).

Later, in his homey cave over tea (well, tea for her, a lovely blended honey mead for him), he tells her about Narnia, and about the horrible Witch who rules the land, saying, “All the orcs are against her, of course, and most of the trolls and gnomes as well, but the fae folk are all with her - those tribes she didn’t push near into extinction, at least.”

In her seat, Lucy shivers despite the fire, watching its light glint off his sharp fangs, wondering at the horrible power of a Witch who could cause even creatures such as he to live in fear.

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, in which Aslan is not such a benevolent god_ **

_To Tempt You In (and Drive You Far Away)_

“A traitor cannot be suffered to live, dear one,” Aslan says.

His tongue licks the tears from her face, grating across her skin like a sandstorm, like the stone of Mr Tumnus’s frozen hand, grasped in her tiny fingers.

“Now,” he says, turning from her, the rasp of his tongue finished in its task, “let us find your brother.”  


*

“It is written in the Deep Magic, daughter,” Aslan says, and Susan barely gets out the words, “But surely there’s something you can do work against-” before he bats out lazily with a single paw, and she cries out, blood welling between the fingers pressed to her face; the slice of a single claw, a scar that will mar her beauty forever more.

“Never suggest such a thing to me again,” he says, voice placid as still water, Susan’s ragged whimpers the only sound.

“Would any of you care to volunteer in his place?” Aslan asks; Lucy’s heart quails as she watches Peter’s head hang, as Susan closes the eye not blinded with blood, as the lion carries on, inexorable, “I thought not - come along, my children.”

  


* * *

**_Prompt: narnia, the pevensies, the pevensies as/turning into gods and goddesses_ **

_What’s a King to a God_

“It doesn’t feel like justice,” Susan says, voice thin and pale as her face, staring at the blood in the snow where they’d been forced to put down a last wolf pack, stubborn to the end, loyal to their Witch-Queen; Edmund rubs his blade clean in the snow and does not look at her, only saying, “There is no justice, only us.”

This, then, is how it begins - with the prayers of Narnians over the Golden Age, all their hopes and dreams and desperate cries to be protected, to be blessed, to be loved - on and on, long past the vanishing point of Kings and Queens, down into the realm of folklore, the realm of myth.

It’s Ed who notices first, upon their return; an Edmund whose Judgements have become pronouncements, their weight as natural laws, inexorable, infallible - then it’s Peter, the Warrior, cutting down armies with a single sweep of his sword, and Lucy, the Life-Bringer, her sweet piping voice singing the forests back to life, the meadows back to bloom; and Susan - Susan who waits, and waits, and nearly despairs, until her lips brush Caspian’s and Love blooms and bursts once more, and Narnia welcomes her gods home for the final time.

* * *


	2. Three for the Narnians (and Friends)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) Jadis, at the beginning of the end.  
> 2) One must be very careful of what is said around Narnia's Talking Beasts.  
> 3) Cor and Aravis can't get comfortable in either of their homelands.

**_Prompt: narnia, Jadis, the origin_ **

_Marching Back Through Time_

The page she holds in her hands is old, so old it should have crumbled long ago, its ink faded down into smudges, were it not for the magic warding it, a casual spell applied without thought, so routine were such things in Charn-of-old.

So old that the language is almost foreign to her eyes, formal, archaic, for Charn does not ossify but rolls ever forward; waves on waves of progress and study and insight all cresting, she thinks, into this moment, into power, into her.

The word itself is hidden, coated in a splash of blood, evidence of her final fight to obtain it, but no matter; a gesture, a murmur, and the blood rises from the page into the air, coalesced into crimson spheres, shining for a moment until she lets them fall, and speaks - one single word, to end the world.

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, animals reacting to human idioms (e.g. “rat bastard” or “I could eat a horse”). Bonus points for “I object to that very strongly” (quoting the bulldog from Magician’s Nephew)_ **

_The Queen of Every Beggar’s Son_

“We don’t say that sort of thing here, though you could not have known,” Susan says, though her barbed smile and glacial tone say quite well that she believes otherwise, and the Telmar Ambassador should have done his homework before daring to set foot (and presumptuous mouth) in a land populated by, among others, the very Rats he’d just inadvertently insulted.

“Rats don’t marry as humans do, and raise our children communally in any case, so such a thing does not exist,” Nielle informs him from her perch on Susan’s right shoulder, one small paw stroking her whiskers as she ponders the expression.

“Unless, of course, you meant ‘bastard’ in the sense of ‘a rude, unpleasant personage with little dignity and less honor,’” Jacques says from her left shoulder, his slender body quivering with suppressed rage, “in which case, I believe it is quite clear to whom at this table the phrase may apply, _sir_.”

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, you're not my homeland anymore_ **

_Laughing, but the Joke’s Not Funny_

Cor never feels warm anymore.

It becomes a joke in the palace, the way he and Aravis huddle together before the great, roaring fireplaces; to the end of their lives, he associates the smell of burning wood, of embers and soot, with burying his face in her hair, all through those first long winters in their damp, chilled new home, perched too high in the mountain passes, swallowed in fog and clouds, cold straight through to the bones.

The first time they return to the sands of Calormen, they luxuriate in the heat for all of half an hour; that’s all it takes before the feel of the air rubs against his skin like sandpaper, dry and harsh, before Aravis’s face glows dewy with perspiration; before the skin they’d left exposed to the sun’s kiss blushes bright pink, swells and tightens with the heat contained beneath, struggling to escape; he watches Aravis blink the sand from her eyes as she veils herself, and thinks the only word to describe them now in either land is _exile_.

* * *


	3. Three for Eustace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) Eustace is not always the most graceful of dragons.  
> 2) Eustace tries to educate Aslan on the nature of big cats vs housecats.  
> 3) Reep does _not_ appreciate being called a capybara when he visits Spare Oom.  
> 4) Eustace isn't the best with girls, but luckily Lucy is there to help him.

**_Prompt: Any, any, inside you there are two wolves — and one of them is Moon-Moon_ **

_Don’t Say We Have Anything in Common_

Funny thing about being a dragon, Eustace finds - he can soar through the sky with the utmost grace, leaping and spinning and sailing the winds on his great, leathery wings, darting from above to snatch up hapless prey (though he does feel a touch upset about that part), and generally feeling like a veritable king; Caspian may rule Narnia, but at least for this moment, Eustace rules the skies.

Unfortunately for Eustace, when one flies, one must also eventually land.

He never does quite get the hang of it, try though he might; when he plummets from the sky into a graceless gallop that inevitably ends with some of his four limbs getting tangled with his tail, sending him in a rolling head-over-teakettle sprawl across the sands, well - no matter how he might wriggle about on his back, no one _truly_ believes he intended to have a good roll in the sand all along.

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Aslan and Eustace, Lions don't purr!_ **

_A Big Cat is Still a Cat_

“Really?” Aslan said, his voice rumbling, on the edge of laughter, the edge of a growl - almost, but not quite.

“Well you see, they don’t have the bones for it - smaller cats traded the ability to roar in order to purr, but a lion...a lion would never do that - would he, Sir?” Eustace said, already feeling miserable, certain he’d put his foot in it again.

“Ah, but you must remember, Master Scrubb,” Aslan said, shaking out his golden mane, “that I am not a _normal_ lion,” and so saying, let loose a purr that fairly shook Eustace’s bones.

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Eustace & Reepicheep, Reep comes to Spare Oom_ **

_Telltale Hard Sell_

To be frank, Eustace rather panics when Harold comes down the hallway, which is why the first thing out of his mouth in response to his father’s puzzled, “I say, what is that thing?” is, “It’s um, a capybara, from South America, you know.”

Harold blinks over his glasses, mustache twitching, looking from Eustace (attempting to look as innocent as possible, a difficult thing when one’s father, unobservant though he may be, has surely noticed that one is not quite the officious little beast one used to be, and has in fact starting acting more grown up than he himself) to Reep, who is not helping matters at all by standing on two feet instead of four, like a proper Spare Oom rodent ought, and who makes things worse by choosing to indignantly squeak out, “I am _no such thing_ , I demand you take that back right this instant!”

Luckily for them all, Harold’s mind gives up at that; “I see, a ventriloquism act, very clever, son - the things you’ve learnt at that school!” is all he says before wandering off; Eustace barely has a chance to breathe a sigh of relief before Reep scrambles up his shoulder, hissing, “I would call you out for such an insult were we in Narnia, friend - here I shall simply have to settle for threatening to bite your ear off should you do it again!”

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, "my snake-breeding cousin"_ **

_We Fuse Like a Family_

“So I told her that you breed snakes,” Lucy explains, “and that I thought perhaps there were some lizards and such as well, because you are _very_ interested in reptiles. She seemed distinctly less interested in you afterwards.”

“Oh, thank heavens,” Eustace replies with feeling, before quickly adding, “not that I’m sure Rose isn’t a very nice girl and all, she’s just not - well -” and his speechlessness isn’t helped one bit when Lucy offers, “Not Jill?” with a very cheeky grin, indeed.

* * *


	4. Three for Lucian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) Lucy reads Caspian's palm.  
> 2) A goodbye on the shores at the end of the world.

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, handfasting_ **

_Somewhere Between Sorrow and Bliss_

Maybe she oughtn’t have done it, but Caspian did have the most lovely vintages aboard, wines Lucy hasn’t tasted in one thousand and three years, give or take, and she never could resist imbibing a touch too much, letting herself go all loose and languorous, freer and free, sip by sip.

“You see, this is your heartline,” she says, tracing the long lines of his palm, having explained to him how not _all_ Narnian witches had been bad, back in the old days, “and it speaks of how you’ll love, and...and-”

Under her questing fingers, his hand shivers, and closes on hers; looking at his face, Lucy’s head swims, breathless, disbelieving, listening to him say, “And who I love?” as he turns her hand in his, as he presses his palm to hers, as they sit silent, inches and worlds apart, joined at the heartline in each and every one.  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Lucy/Caspian, Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again._ **

_Just Don’t Say a Word_

“You’ve never been more beautiful,” he murmurs, and she can feel the desperate desire in his hands as they push back the hair blowing in her face, cradling her head in his palms as though he can hold her mind there with him, on the shores of Aslan’s Country, for always.

But he can’t; she knows it, sure as she knows the feel of Aslan’s breath warm on the back of her neck, as she knows the weight of Ed’s gaze, the cool clear blue of the waters, pristine at her feet.

So she breathes in deep, the scent of this liminal place filling her, tying itself to him, inextricable until the end of her days, and presses her forehead to his, feeling their breath mingle; turns away before she can ruin the moment with weeping, the only thought she can manage echoing empty in her head: _Just because a thing is doomed doesn’t make it any less real._  


* * *


	5. Three for the Golden Ones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) Peter would swim through blood for Narnia, if he had to.  
> 2) Lucy spends an educational afternoon with the Otters.  
> 3) He loves making his sister smile, even if it's only by not dying.

**_Prompt: Narnia, Peter Pevensie, 'the burden of being a holy fellow / is your halo better gleam'_ **

_The Man From God_

Blood runs like ink over his fingers in those early days, black and greenish and scarlet, oozing from a thousand wounds, a hundred enemies; Narnia’s blood on his hands, stained to the elbow, a rainbow splattered across his face.

The forests drink the drips as he passes through, greedy; the crowds at the Cair cheer, cats licking his fingers, his sisters’ hands coming away rust-streaked where they touch his skin; the clear sea grows murky where he immerses himself, sand and waves scouring him.

 _Not enough_ , Peter thinks, the grim thoughts like a tide, and dives into the welter again, his golden aura painted with life, polished with death.  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Lucy, Live hard/ Die Young/ Bad girls do it well_ **

_Our Faces Are Covered_

On the riverbank, Lucy blinks rapidly. “Goodness,” she says, carefully committing the very...inventive phrase to memory, “I don’t believe even Peter knows _that_ one.”

In the water, the Otters splash and cackle, delighted with their vulgarity; back on dry land, Lucy smirks, dips her feet into the water, and settles in for what promises to be an enlightening afternoon.  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Peter & Lucy, laughter_ **

_In a Sunlit Room_

He’s always thought her laughter was like sunlight bursting from behind clouds - or perhaps that’s just the broken fever talking.

Either way, she’s laughing now, sunny, giddy little giggles, and though she has to lean in close, Peter’s sure she hears when he says, “You always laugh when you’ve managed to heal someone, do you know that?”

He knows it because Lucy smiles, places a cool hand on his brow, and says simply, “Healing should always bring joy,” and he’s not up to laughing yet, but he’ll manage a smile at the least, just for her.

* * *


	6. Three for the Queen Susan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) The young Queen Susan does not enjoy learning about Queen Helen, though she can't quite understand why.  
> 2) She believes a queen is much more than a pawn, in life or in chess.  
> 3) Ed discovers the reason for Susan's unhappiness in Tashbaan.  
> 4) Narnia has always brought her great joy.  
> 5) Susan does her best to please Aslan, always.  
> 6) After the crash, Susan speaks to Aslan one last time.  
> 7) There is no problem with Susan.  
> 8) Susan thinks of what to name her baby.  
> 9) She travels the world over, always in search of a doorway.

  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan or Susan/any, And seeing the shape of your name/Still spells out pain_ **

_A Wrinkle in Your New Life_

The Narnian history books make much of Queen Helen, of her indomitable spirit, her boundless cheer, the comfort she bestowed on all her subjects, great and small alike.

Lucy loves nothing more than to hear tales of her, and Ed is nearly as eager; even Peter doesn’t seem to mind.

But Susan’s heart aches every time she hears the name, though she can no longer remember why; can no longer put a name to the twist in her soul, the little hollow spot that cries out in the night, the small bit of emptiness that all her efforts will never fill; so she smiles - gently - and closes the book, saying she hasn’t the head for history, and walks away.  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan, "A queen is just a pawn with a bunch of fancy moves"_ **

_Far From the Bitter Bride_

“Oh _really_ ,” Susan says, her voice - which had been perfectly level and pleasant a very short time ago - dripping with frost and the sort of icicles that boded very ill for her opponent.

A short distance from the chessboard, Edmund grimaces and leans over to whisper to Peter, “Well, he’s done it now - I give the illustrious Duke twenty minutes tops before she’s both trounced him and shown him the door.”

Watching his sister’s fierce concentration and absolute refusal to so much as acknowledge the man across the board from her in the slightest fashion, Peter shakes his head and says, “I’d lay odds on no more than ten minutes at the outside - this one’s truly put his foot in it.”  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, any, 'the letters that you left behind / no longer shall I read / blood's between the pages /and I can't stand to see you bleed'_ **

_The Weight of All Those Willing Words_

It’s the letters that give her away - not that he’ll admit to snooping, but it’s unlike Susan to leave such a mass of correspondence out (Ed knowing well from experience that her notes tend to be brief, concise to a fault, so much does she dislike writing), and the boldness of her hand, so characteristic with firm black strokes filling up the whole page no matter how little she says, is absent, her words tumbling hesitant across the sheets.

He’s not certain whether it’s the heat of Tashbaan or the flare of his rage that makes his face burn as he finds the notes that caused her distress, page after page of vile suggestions from Rabadash,  
demands for and descriptions of acts his mind refuses to imagine his sister engaged in, until he understands well the spots and blotches on Susan’s aborted attempts at replies, understands that even her legendary courtesy cannot extend far enough to cover these insults.

He stops reading long before he runs out of pages, sickened by seeing her wrung out so in filthy prose; he’s sitting there still, the prince’s vulgar threats crumpled in his fist, when she returns, when she takes in the situation at a tired glance and crumples herself; when he holds her to him with one arm, listening to her whisper in misery, “Oh Ed, what am I to do?” while his other hand holds the sheets to the flame of the lamp, burning them down to ash, one by one.  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan, joy_ **

_Kissed a Virgin as if She Were Clean_

_Joy_ \- in whirling through dances, all dark hair and dark eyes and clever hands at her waist; in the music pulsing through her bones, the laughter, the dizzy, sweet exhilaration in her blood, radiant and reflected from all around her.

 _Joy_ \- in jewels given by dwarfs and badgers, mermaids and moles; in fabrics woven from dryad-tended flax, from the fine soft wool of Sheep and Alpacas, silks from the droll Silkworms, all shot through with threads of gold and silver given to her from deep in the earth and sewn together on Mrs Beaver’s clever machine; Narnia’s love and beauty held in her hands, a gift fit to humble her own.

 _Joy_ \- in rich, heady wine, and firelight, and witty quips traded; in knowledge, and experience, and the firm, roaming lips of a lover, pleasure given and returned - 

(and then - lost).  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan Pevensie, 'oh, the queen of peace /always does her best to please'_ **

_Called Out for Release_

_Do I please you, Aslan?_ she thinks, when the Talking Beasts shower her with love and praise, all through that first sweet spring, hot summer fading into a hard-won autumn; when ambassadors travel from over the sea to see her gracious beauty; when her finely-wrought words win Narnia peace, and prosperity, and plenty.

 _Do I please you, Aslan?_ she wonders, a young woman dancing in the midsummer groves, toes dug into the rich black of the earth, lips reddened with wine poured by Baachus’s own hand, blood thrumming to the fierce beat of Pan’s pipes and drums, body and spirit laid bare for Narnia’s wild season.

 _Did that please you, Aslan?_ she asks, flat in her mind, palms streaked and sticky with assassin’s blood, the body at her feet; the drip and splash of crimson a counterpoint to her ragged breath, rasping like a growl from her throat.  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan Pevensie, 'I am your saviour, / your last-serving daughter'_ **

_From There No More Ever I Spoke_

“Did you forget,” she asks, head tilted to the side, her gaze sharp as the arrows her fingers twitch in memory of holding, “that there is no one else left here to remember you, to tell of you, to spread everything you taught us to believe in?”

Aslan does not answer; whether he can not or will not, she doesn’t know, only that he’s never spoken to her here, in this chill, damp land she has to make her own.

“And I will not,” she says, shoulders aching with the desire to pull back and let fly, with the need to _end_ , “not for all the promise of heaven in the world,” and if his golden image flickers and fades as she turns, wild-eyed, from the cliff edge, there’s no one left to see it.  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan, there is no problem with Susan_ **

_Stay Behind Me Now_

“My sister Susan,” Peter said gravely, “will be along in her own time, no doubt.”

“Each person has his - or her - own life to live,” Aslan responded, “and if the Queen Susan does as her heart bids her, we will not fault her for it.”

(In Spare Oom, Susan closes up the Finchley house for good and hops a ship bound for the Continent, standing at the prow, eyes shut, hair streaming out, basking in the sunlight of a new day; of all the possibilities life can offer.)  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan Pevensie, It's been a long time and seeing the shape of your name / still spells out pain_ **

_Smoothing Me Over_

“We could name him Peter, if you liked,” her husband says quietly, his hand resting on the swell of her belly, “or Edmund. I wouldn’t mind, truly.”

In a flash, the past burns through her memory: Peter’s golden hair blown on a Narnian breeze, Ed’s dark eyes, their corners crinkled in laughter, and Susan gasps, sharp and harsh; as the child within her unleashes a flurry of kicks, she grasps her husband’s hand in her own and says, “Anything but that, please.”  


  


* * *

**_Prompt: Narnia, Susan, she's standing in the ashes at the end of the world /four winds blowing through her hair_ **

_On the Other Side_

England is too smoky, too full of soot, every black stain on her skin choking her, every breath that smells of train whistles smothering her in her own homeland, and so she flees.

Scandinavia is too cold, the icy wind whipping her hair across her eyes even as the beauty of the fjords tugs at her heart; the cold prickles it, icicles creeping insidious over her skin, shards forming in her blackened lungs, and so she turns her back on winter.

The Greecian coast is beautiful, all blue water and white sand and a taste of the ancient wild across her tongue; the warm waters pull at her, longing to fill up her lungs, whispering in a rush against her ears of other seas, other sands, other ancient worlds, and she flounders and flails, and washes up on the shore, gasping.

The Egyptian sands feel like the end of the world, blasting her choked, wasted lungs with heat and the weight of the desert, of the past; the end of the world and the beginning, as she studies the portraits of pharaohs by torchlight, ash falling and flaking at her feet, as she wanders through passages, deeper and deeper into the realm of the dead, and emerges, finally-

-and fills her lungs with the sweet air of another world, at last.

* * *


End file.
